Even before she stepped from the shower, she knew the attacker would be waiting. No words formed in her mind, or thoughts that might be put into words-it never happened that way. Only a vague feeling that danger waited beyond the shower door.

She slid the door back and gazed at the man. His stance was that of a well trained fighter, and although he stood only six inches taller than five feet, his frame was layered in tectonic slabs of muscle beneath a black, tight-fitting jumpsuit. The gold sword and shield of Base Security was emblazoned on the glossy fabric over his heart, and a pink scar an eighth of an inch wide ran from the outside of his left eye, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth, standing out against skin tanned nearly black. All facial hair-including eyebrows and lashes-was absent, and his bald head reflected the bathroom's overhead light as if oiled.

A belter, she thought as her gaze darted to the stun pistol holstered on the man's left hip, then to the pendant suspended from a fine silver chain about his neck. The shape of a hen's egg and half the size of a closed fist, the pendant was fashioned from pitted dull-gray metal. Somewhere, sometime, she had seen another like it, but she could remember neither where nor when.

"How did you get in here?" she demanded.

The dark-skinned man did not respond. Instead, he looked her nude body up and down, as if sizing her up for strength and ability. What he saw was a six-foot- four-inch tall woman, apparently thirty years of age (actual age: forty-two), her body glistening with water droplets. Her breasts were high and firm, her hips not much broader than they had been twenty years before. Coal black hair falling to mid-back, eyes brown, features slightly Oriental.

What he failed to see were her prosthetics, and a fighting ability honed to perfection through years of training and discipline.

"Captain Susan Tanner?" he finally asked, his voice deep and strong.

She wanted to ask who he was, but she couldn't; her thoughts were blocked. There was a unique quality to his voice, a certain hard inflection she had not heard in many years. It actually demanded a response.

"I am Susan Tanner-"

His lips pulled back against sharp-filed teeth and a concentrated bark issued from his diaphragm. He lunged, his right hand flashing out in a vicious karate chop directed at her head.

She snapped her left hand up to deflect the punch, and the man's callused knuckles drove into the white ceramic tiles an inch from her ear. Pulverized tile peppered her body as her right hand shot out to slam into his throat. She felt his larynx collapse beneath her prosthetic hand.

Pain mingled with surprise washed over his dark features, and he staggered back a step, then caught himself and again scanned her body. He had expected neither her speed nor her strength.

"What's this about?" she demanded, putting as much authority as she could muster into her voice. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

As soon as she asked those questions, she wished she hadn't. It couldn't possibly do any good. Even if he wanted to respond, he couldn't. She had seen to that when she crushed his larynx.

But there were those whose job it was to obtain that information. Base Security would get to the bottom of this. They could extract information from any mind; they had the probe.

Before she could act on that thought, the dark man renewed his attack. Spitting blood onto the white tiles at her feet, he came at her again.

This time he half-turned, kicking out and up with his left foot, the side of his boot aimed at her solar plexus. She side-stepped just enough to avoid the kick, then planted her bare feet as firmly as possible on the blood-slicked tiles and shifted her weight. In the same motion, she brought her right elbow crashing down into her attacker's knee.

Bone shattered beneath flesh as his face contorted in pain. He tried to cry out, but the only sound his ruined vocal cords could produce was a soft gurgle. He crumbled to the floor at her feet.

Propping himself up on one elbow, he looked into Susan's eyes. His gaze sent a cold shiver up her spine; it held a seething hatred greater than anything she had ever before seen.

Then he fingered the pendant hanging about his neck, and silently disappeared.

A fog of unreality descended over Susan's thoughts, and a tingling sensation began just behind her eyes. She felt suddenly dizzy.

She stepped around the spot where her assailant had lain only an instant before and staggered into the room beyond. Dripping water across the carpet, she went to the chair before the small wooden desk and sat as the tingling behind her eyes became a full-blown headache. With a sharp shake of her head she tried to clear the pain, but it did no good. The headache merely intensified.

Closing her eyes, she held her head in her hands and attempted to collect her thoughts. The headache, the dizziness, that feeling of unreality-she knew they had not been brought on by the dark man's attack. She could deal with violence. Since Aldebaran, nearly ten years ago, Admiral Renford had used her for myriad security assignments. Her superbly developed fighting ability and the power in her prosthetics made her a natural for such work, as did her ability to somehow detect coming danger, although she had never told the Admiral about that. On a number of occasions she had acted as temporary bodyguard for heads-of-state, and had often accompanied the Admiral and his family while they vacationed Earth-side. There were also her uncountable assignments as a diplomatic courier, transporting sensitive documents and various sealed packages. Many of these tasks had required violent action.

No, the belter's attack had not caused those symptoms. They were products of what had happened after the attack. They were brought on by the man's sudden and mysterious disappearance, produced when Susan's normally rational mind slammed up hard against the cold wall of something she simply could not understand.

She struggled with that for a few seconds, pushing against the wall, testing it, trying to break through into understanding. But she could not. And she realized she would not be able to function properly until she got beyond it.

There were questions she should be asking, certain steps she knew she should be taking. But those questions simply would not form, and the steps refused to fall into any sort of logical order. And, to make matters worse, the cobweb remnants of last night's nightmare pressed in on her thoughts-long past emotions and conversations, long dead faces-and her body began to tremble.

A multi-colored snowflake pattern suddenly blossomed in her mind. At first it remained confined to a small, isolated corner, but quickly spread to fill her entire consciousness. Within seconds she began mouthing guttural monotonal syllables in a language she did not understand.

Along with her subtle ability to predict danger in the immediate future, the pattern and the chant had mysteriously appeared ten years ago, while she recuperated in the hospital after the Aldebaran incident. Although she did not know precisely what the pattern and the chant were, they did seem to work. Somehow, they came to her aid when they were needed most, keeping her anxiety in check during times of stress.

She had never told her doctors-not anyone-about either the pattern and the chant, or her strange prescient ability. She did not dare.

The fog lifted from her thoughts as quickly as it had come, and within seconds she was filled with calm confidence where an instant before there had been uncertainty and fear. At the same time, both the pain in her head and the dizziness disappeared, and her body ceased its tremors.